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4 October 2008

Guest post: Politics kills!

A guest post from Marc Alexander of Harvard's Gov department, who blogs at Politics and Health:

Politics kills! A new study on traffic fatalities on the election day...

A brilliant research report published in the Oct 2 issue of JAMA found that driving fatalities increase significantly on the election day in the US. Redelmeier from U of Toronto and Robert Tibshirani from Stanford found that the hazard of being hurt or dying in a traffic accident rises on the day of the Presidential election. While the effect seems to be bipartisan (or non-partisan?), the risk is higher for men, for those in the Northeast, and for those who vote early in the day. To my knowledge, this is the best systematic evidence that shows the dark side of political participation in the US; despite all the benefits and necessities of active participation to keep democracy alive, there also seem to be significant costs. Remember to vote, but be careful when driving or crossing the street this election season! The article was covered by Reuters and the New York Times here.
The original research report is available from JAMA here and is titled "Driving Fatalities on US Presidential Election Days." Here is the free excerpt from JAMA:

The results of US presidential elections have large effects on public health by their influence on health policy, the economy, and diverse political decisions. We are unaware of studies testing whether the US presidential electoral process itself has a direct effect on public health. We hypothesized that mobilizing approximately 50% to 55% of the population, along with US reliance on motor vehicle travel, might result in an increased number of fatal motor vehicle crashes during US presidential elections.

Posted by Andy Eggers at October 4, 2008 12:35 PM